Baldwin DeRoche, known as "Balo", is one of the major figures in traditional shipbuilding in the Grenadines. He worked in Petite Martinique, the neighboring island of Carriacou, where he built his sloops right on the beach.
Its materials
His boats combine woods sourced from far and wide: planking of silver balis from Guyana, a greenheart keel, white cedar frames, and floor timbers hewn from local wood. It's the classic Grenadines combination—hard under the keel, flexible in the frames.
His boats
Summer Cloud — 1998, 39 feet
Commissioned by Antiguan businessman Eddie Barreto to replace his previous sloop, Summer Wind, the boat was used for fishing and raced in numerous regattas in the Caribbean after its construction. It also served as a floating residence for filmmaker Charles Hambleton during the filming of Pirates of the Caribbean. Recently purchased, it now resides in Barbados, where it is being refitted before resuming its regatta tour.
Savvy — 2007, 43 feet
With its red hull, operated on a charter basis, it has become one of the images of Grenada.
Beauty of Petite Martinique — 2008, 48.5 feet
The last sloop built by him. Blue hull, made for Jeff Stevens, owner and captain of the schooner Jambalaya. Currently chartering between St. Vincent and Grenada, it boasts an interior layout of rare refinement for a Grenadines sloop, and will go down in history as Baldwin DeRoche's last boat.
What remains
With the construction of Beauty of Petite Martinique in 2008, the traditional building of large sloops in Petite Martinique came to an end. The island's expertise, along with that of Carriacou, is now listed as part of the intangible cultural heritage of humanity, but shipbuilding on this island seems definitively to belong to the past.
Contact — Baldwin DeRoche aka «Balo»
Do you know this shipwright, his background, the boats he built, or an official way to contact him? Help us improve this profile: your message goes directly to us.
Your message is forwarded by email to the site team; it is not stored in the site's database. The email address you provide is used solely to reply to you. You can request access to, correction of, or deletion of this information by writing to the site team.